​Andrew Whitehead'sBlog

Another book bought for the cover. Not that the book itself is a complete dud. Berkely Mather, real name John Evan Weston-Davies, was a retired army officer with many years of service in India and across Asia who wrote thrillers that attracted the attention of Ian Fleming and Ernest Hemingway. They are dated, as this cover suggests. The Pass Beyond Kashmir, Mather's second book, was published in 1960. It clearly sold well - it's not hard to find, though I was pleased to pick up a copy with Barbara Walton's dust jacket in half decent condition.

And of course, the vulnerable white woman was the stock-in-trade of Kashmir in Anglophone popular fiction - thanks largely to H.E. Bates's The Scarlet Sword. More on that here.